The Ego Ideal and the Ideal Self

This paper has been prompted by the need to resolve a number of practical problems which have arisen in the course of indexing psychoanalytic case material in the Hampstead Index. Faced with the need to classify observations relating to ideal formation in children, it has been found impossible to distinguish sharply between the operation of an "ego ideal" and the superego system, although a number of features which are commonly referred to as constituents of the ego ideal are not fully included within the concept of the superego. Accordingly, the model of superego functioning (Sandler, 1960); (Sandler et al., 1962), and that of the representational world (Sandler and Rosenblatt, 1962), used as a theoretical basis for indexing superego material, have been extended in an attempt to take into account the different facets of the concept of the ego ideal as described at different times by Freud and in some of the subsequent psychoanalytic literature.

Briefly, the view has been taken that various elements of what might be referred to as the ego-ego ideal-superego system have to be considered both in isolation and in their interaction. In particular,